Each May for 30 years, my wife had had mammograms, and the reports were always good. Kathy would go for the test, then within days, the phone would ring and a voice would tell her that all was well.

Then last spring the phone brought different news. They wanted to do a recheck. Then an ultrasound. Then they wanted to meet with us.

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A biopsy confirmed the diagnostics: a Grade-II tumor in Kathy’s right breast. They would need to remove the lump and sentinel lymph node for further testing.

As it turned out, the lymph node and the tumor margins were clean. Blood tests and a full-body PET scan showed no signs of disease elsewhere. After surgery, the oncologist suggested the customary battery of radiation in order to kill any stray cancer cells that lingered.

Daily Kathy went for the series of 20 treatments. The office check-ins each time were as perfunctory as her mammograms once had been. At random intervals, she’d be asked for nominal sums: $15 here, $25 there. She assumed these represented her financial responsibility for the regimen.

All told, she paid a total of $170 out of pocket. Admittedly, a pittance.

When her treatments were finished they did another recheck; all was fine. That night we enjoyed a wonderful, celebratory dinner.

A few days later, a bill arrived. For $412.93. The codes were indecipherable, and we were annoyed that it was marked “past due,” as this was the first mention of any such overages. But we shrugged. Kathy was cancer-free. That was the main thing.

Within days a second bill arrived. An additional $1,250.54. Harder to shrug off.

By the time bills stopped arriving, they totaled well over $2,000. All “past due.”

Kathy demanded an itemized statement. When it arrived, we discovered that with each of those 20 trips, she was incurring a hidden charge of $55.36, plus miscellaneous charges. None of this had been broached by anyone at the front desk during her therapy, even though Kathy asked, more than once, “So we’re good on money?”

I see nothing to justify these fees in any of the papers we were given, although our attention has been called to a catch-all passage about “unreimbursed charges.”

Our experience is hardly unique. Women dutifully undergo their regimens, oblivious to the fact that behind the scenes, a bill is metastasizing into a “secret” budget-buster. The 2016 CancerCare Patient Access and Engagement Report reveal that barely half of respondents felt they understood their insurance overage “completely” or “very well.” Similarly, recorded clinical interactions suggest that oncologists discuss expenses with fewer than half of their patients.

And keep in mind, Kathy’s treatment took place under a highly rated Medicare-supplement plan. A younger relative of ours with traditional insurance reports being hit with a surprise bill for nearly $7,000.

Being charitable about it, one might say that neither doctors nor staff want to further darken a woman’s spirits by discussing money at a time when she’s worried about her survival. Nor do they want patients to consider forgoing much-needed treatment. So they soft-pedal the issue of money.

Some may question our smarts: How could you think you were gonna get off as easy as $170? Others may offer guilt-inducing recriminations: You should be grateful; at least you beat it. My wife/sister/mother wasn’t so lucky.

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They’re valid thoughts. Even so, a victory over a dread disease ends up leaving a bitter taste, and that’s a damn shame.

Salerno is author of “Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.”